Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter has prompted many users to switch to other social networks with similar pedigree. Mastodon chief executive Eugen Rochko said Mastodon has a case in point, which saw more than 30,000 new user sign-ups in a single day. The sudden influx of new users has also slowed down its servers.
“Mastodon is slow right now, as far as I can tell because twice as many people use it at the same time. I’m working on making it fast-forward again,” Rochko said in a post on the forum. said.
Another social networking site, CounterSocial, is experiencing a similar experience and is now upgrading its infrastructure.
“Due to the unprecedented influx of new users, CounterSocial is undergoing an infrastructure upgrade. We expect to return at approximately 9 p.m. Eastern time on April 27,” CounterSocial said in a web post.
Security, privacy and communications expert Christopher Budd is among the many people who migrated from Twitter for CounterSocial. Bud said in a LinkedIn post, “In light of recent events, I have gone countersocial and zeroed in on my Twitter account. Many people at InfoSec are going counter social. I’m supporting this by paying for it.” I like getting paid instead of ads, data scraping and algorithmic crap.”
Launched in 2016 as a decentralized social network, Mastodon made headlines in India in 2019 when Supreme Court lawyer Sanjay Hegde said he was linking to the site after his Twitter account was blocked. Unlike Twitter, Mastodon allows users to create and host their own personal Twitter-like networks, called instances, allowing creators to set rules and decide who can be part of the network.
Since all networks exist on multiple servers, there is no single comprehensive entity that can target them with ads. Previously only accessible through a web browser, the Mastodon app is now available on the Google Play Store and Apple App Store.
CounterSocial, on the other hand, looks similar to Twitter and claims to be free of bots, trolls, and fake news. It is also ad-free and claims not to mine or sell user data. However, its origins are shady, as it was founded by an anonymous hacktivist named The Jester, who is believed to have carried out cyberattacks on WikiLeaks, a former Iranian president, and some Islamic websites. It is listed on both Play Store and App Store.
Although Elon Musk has said that his goal is to promote free speech on Twitter, many feel it could have negative repercussions for the platform. Experts warned that a pragmatic approach to moderation and allowing people to say anything in the name of free speech could exacerbate the problem of hate speech and fake news.
Mainstream social network issues have resulted in users being disadvantaged by mainstream networks. For example, Facebook lost one million daily active users for the first time in 2021, showing its financial results for the last quarter of 2021. Truth Social, a social media platform launched by former US President Donald Trump in February is also seeing a lot. Why traction?